THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO ARRIVE AT A DECISION

Through advocacy or inquiry

Arriving at a decision, as far as the concept of advocacy is concerned, is a contest. An advocate enters into a discussion solely for the purpose of convincing the decision makers. An advocate is a spokesman for his position. He will lobby for while defending it at the same time. Dissenters are discouraged or dismissed. Advocates fight to win since the alternative is to lose.

Inquiry, on the other hand, treats decision-making as a problem that needs to be solved. An "inquirer" enters into a discussion for the purpose of evaluating hypotheses. They think critically and present and listen to balanced arguments. Their attitude keeps them open to alternatives even when these viewpoints are submitted by the minority. In the end, this approach leads to a sense of collective ownership of the final decision by the entire group.

Politics, unfortunately, is one of those topics that can inflame the heart. It is hard to maintain an inquiring nature in this subject. Passion has a way of turning people into fierce advocates for their positions.

As my uncle often said, there are two topics of discussion that never end: politics and religion. And he wisely refrains from participating in both.

The presidential election is less than 90 days away and the incumbent president has certainly had a tumultuous administration. It is no wonder that passions run high especially among the Democrats.

I heard Senator Obama, the Democratic candidate, give a rousing speech at his party's national convention. As a former member of Toastmasters, I applauded his masterful delivery of his message. However, sometimes the delivery is so good that it is hard to review the meaning of the message.

I want to do that with both candidates.

I was surprised, therefore, when I read the analysis of Obama's speech in this political opinion article by Mr. Robert Tracinski. Entitled "Obama Offers a Beautifully Packaged Lie," I read it with a critical eye. I was looking for flawed partisan logic but saw none.

Here then, I present for your own review, are excerpts of Tracinski's article:

Barack Obama can fake sincerity, and that, more than the words of a speech or the pageantry that precedes it, is the key to his power as a speaker.

His speech last night was brilliant and perfect. It is too bad that the whole thing was a lie, which depended on the smoothness and apparent sincerity of Senator Obama's delivery to lull the listener into a state of credulity and prevent him from asking too many questions.

Here's an example that is small but revealing. Obama led with the best sales pitch he has to offer: that he is not George Bush. But of course, Obama is running against John McCain, not Bush. So he attempted to justify the substitution by claiming that "John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time." This statistic has been used throughout the Democratic convention, but it makes no sense. Bush is not a member of Congress and casts no votes there--so how can you compare his voting record to that of McCain?

But don't examine this folly; ask only what it accomplishes. It allows Obama to run against an unpopular president who will not defend himself because he is not actually in the race.

APPEASING RUSSIA?

This is the same title of an excellent article that appeared in Newsweek two weeks ago. It was written immediately after Russia counterattacked Georgia.

The author, John Barry, carefully constructs his point using the lessons of history. He drew parallels with Hitler and Stalin's Soviet Union.

Nature abhors a vacuum and the United States has filled that void. Whether Americans like it or not, America, the most powerful country in the world, is also the world's top cop.

What if America does not live up to that role? Well, other powers will step into that void. Nature abhors a vacuum. This law of physics apparently applies to human affairs as well. Ignoring a problem does not make it go away. After you read excerpts of the article below, ask yourself how differently the future would have turned out if Hitler's early probing attempts were rebuffed strongly.

Let me quote the second, third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs of this article:

As those of a certain age will recall, "appeasement" encapsulated the determination of British governments of the 1930s to avoid war in Europe, even if it meant capitulating to the ever-increasing demands of Adolf Hitler. The nadir came in 1938, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain acceded to Hitler's demand to take over the western slice of Czechoslovakia—a dispute Chamberlain so derisively dismissed.

It is impossible to view the Russian onslaught against Georgia without these bloodstained memories rising to mind. In history, as the great French President Charles de Gaulle remarked—no doubt plagiarising someone else—the only constant is geography. And through centuries of European history the only constant has been that small countries, doomed by geography to lie between great powers, are destined to be the cockpit for their imperial ambitions. That's held true since the Low Countries' agony under Spanish power in the 1500s. And the lichen has not yet spread over the gravestones of Europe and America that mark the toll of the two European wars of the 20th century—both having their roots in struggles between rival empires to assert power over the luckless nations of central Europe.

This time, the cockpit lies further east. In the wake of the cold war, the West providentially summoned the nerve to push NATO eastward to incorporate the former Warsaw Pact vassals of the Soviet Union—presciently doing this while post-Soviet Russia was too weak to resist. But once Moscow got its breath back, anyone with historical wit could foresee a revived Russian push for influence in central Europe. Many argued against this NATO expansion, calling it "premature" and "sure to inflame Russia." The usual arguments. Those naysayers might now look at the Russian offensive in Georgia, and ponder how much greater this crisis would be had it involved, say, Poland or Hungary or the Czech Republic. At least central Europe is now under the umbrella of NATO Article 5 guarantees.

Instead, what we see are conflicts at the new margins of the West's sway: Ukraine, the Balkans, now Georgia. These conflicts have one common factor: a resurgent Russia determined to exploit local grievances to beat back Western influence—in shorthand, democracy—on its shrunken frontiers. Using, in all cases, precisely the argument (a Russian right to protect its citizens, in Serbia its co-religionists) that Hitler used in the 1930s. The Sudeten Czechs were Germans, after all. Just as the South Ossetians now are, well, sort of Russian—having at any rate been issued Russian passports.

Doesn't it make sense?

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The graphic came from here.